Warm versus cool

This month Paul Talbot-Greaves demonstrates how you can add impact to your painting by using warm and cool contrasting colours and sets this month’s challenge for you to submit for appraisal

Paul Talbot-Greaves

Apainting of mainly warm colours can have its temperature exaggerated through the use of cooler hues placed elsewhere. Likewise a cool painting such as a winter scene can be made to feel cooler through the inclusion of a little warmth.

Warm colours

Warm colours are the yellows, oranges and reds of the colour wheel. The colours progress from pale hues of yellow, through red-orange to stronger colours of red and red-violet. These would include, but are not limited to, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, cadmium orange, burnt sienna, cadmium red, Indian red, alizarin crimson, manganese violet and Winsor violet.

Cool colours

Cooler colours are the greens, blues and violets on the colour wheel. As with warm colours the cools also progress through pale and strong variants. The paler colours include, but are not limited to, sap green, viridian, cobalt turquoise and these continue into their stronger neighbours of cerulean blue, cobalt blue and French ultramarine.

About The Artist

Watercolourists will love award-winning featured artist Janet Kenyon's city scenes and learning more about her approach and working methods, whilst practical watercolour articles include Paul Riley's focus on the importance of the negative shapes within your paintings and Paul Talbot-Greaves' inspirational demonstration showing how to place the warm and cool colours for best effect in your landscape compositions. Paul also sets you this month's painting challenge. More watercolour articles by Judi Whitton show you new ways to capture the effect of summer foliage, while Barry Herniman reveals the contents of his plein air sketching kit and demonstrates a bright summer scene featuring woods and water. Jo Quigley shows how a systematic approach can help to achieve a realistic seascape in acrylics, Haidee-Jo Summers explains how to exploit shape and suggestion in your oil paintings to maintain a painterly style, Martin Kinnear demystifies perspective, and we welcome back Aine Divine who provides an infectious account of how to complete a mixed media flower painting that you'll definitely want to try for yourself! Ian Cryer suggests that a break with old habits can open the way to refresh your painting style, Phil Tyler encourages you to explore the art of the self-portrait, Liz Seward shares her love of working with watercolour pencils, and David Questa shares his love of busy urban scenes that will see you reaching for your drawing materials. All this and more to keep you inspired and full of new drawing and painting ideas over the summer months!